Palestinians said they had received renewed warnings from Israel’s military to move from north Gaza to the south of the strip, with the added warning that they could be identified as sympathisers with a “terrorist organisation” if they stayed put.
The message was delivered in leaflets marked with the Israel Defense Forces name and logo from Saturday and sent to people via mobile phone audio messages across the Gaza Strip, a narrow territory that is just 45 km (28 miles) long.
“Urgent warning, to residents of Gaza. Your presence north of Wadi Gaza puts your life in danger. Whoever chooses not to leave north Gaza to the south of Wadi Gaza might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organisation,” the leaflet said.
Israel has pounded Gaza with airstrikes since the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israeli soil on Oct. 7. Israel has massed troops and armour on the border with Gaza ahead of an expected land incursion.
Israel has previously warned Palestinians to move south, although Palestinians said they had not previously been told they could be considered “terrorist” sympathisers if they did not. They also say making the journey south remains highly risky amid airstrikes and say areas of the south have also been hit.
Many families who left Gaza to the south said they had lost relatives during the Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, fears that the Israel-Palestinian conflict might spread through the Middle East ratcheted higher on Sunday, with the US sending more military assets to the region as Israel pummelled targets in Gaza and elsewhere.
More than 50 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the narrow coastal enclave overnight, Gaza medical sources said on Sunday.
Earlier, Palestinian media reported at least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Israeli forces, in the meanwhile, killed a fifth Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, bringing the number of deaths to 90 since Oct. 7, the Palestinian health ministry said.
An Israeli missile attack targeted Damascus and Aleppo international airports in neighbouring Syria early on Sunday, killing a civilian worker and putting the airports out of service, Syrian state media reported.
Israel said its aircraft struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Saturday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile in cross-border fighting that the Iran-backed group said killed six of its fighters.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautioned Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister NajibMikati on Saturday that the Lebanese people would be affected if his country were drawn in, the State Department said.
Israel started its “total siege” of Gaza after an Oct. 7 cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants of the Islamist movement Hamas killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in a shock rampage that has traumatised Israel.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s air and missile strikes in retaliation had killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, with more than a million of the tiny territory’s 2.3 million people displaced.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would send more military assets to the Middle East to support Israel and strengthen the US defence posture in the region following “recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces”.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and additional Patriot air defence missile system battalions will be sent to the region, and more troops will be put on standby, Austin said.
Washington has already sent a significant amount of naval power to the Middle East in recent weeks, including two aircraft carriers, their support ships and about 2,000 Marines.
Drones and rockets targeted two military bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq last week, the latest in a series of attacks after Iraqi militants warned Washington against intervening to support Israel against Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
A deadly blast at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on Tuesday was likely caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza, not an Israeli strike, Canada’s National Department of Defence said, reaching similar conclusions to the US and France.
Israeli aircraft struck a compound beneath a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank early on Sunday that the military said was being used by militants to organise attacks.
Israeli forces killed a fifth Palestinian in the West Bank overnight, bringing the number of deaths there to 90 since the war began, the Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday.
Palestinian media reported at least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, and that Israel was striking the southern city of Rafah.—INP
